Joe Bob Briggs Presents: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter
1966
88 minutes
Elite Entertainment
UnratedCast • John Lupton, Narda Onyx, Estelita Rodriguez, Cal Bolder, Jim Davis, Steven Geray, Rayford Barnes, William Fawcett, Nestor Paiva
Writers • Carl K. Hittleman
Director • Willam Beaudine
Today is Day Nineteen of VE's CreepFest!
IMAGINE SIGNING UP for a continuing ed course called "The History of Drive-In Cinema 101." You show up for your first day of class and find out that, against your expectations, your teacher isn't some loser online movie reviewer — it's Joe Bob Briggs hisself!
That's basically what you get with Joe Bob Briggs Presents Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, Elite Entertainment's first installment in a series of D.I. flicks that feature a complete running commentary by the peerless Drive-In movie historian.
Now, you can opt for the movie without Joe Bob's commentary, but why in the world would you want to do that? Unlike what the MST3K guys do (which, unlike some B-movie nerds out there, I happen to like), Joe Bob takes advantage of the movie's languid pace and unnecessary dialogue to both give the viewer a lesson in how to watch a Drive-In movie and provide background info on everyone — and everything — in it. Every actor who appears on screen gets a career rundown by Joe Bob, and it takes the entire movie to cover the career of director William "One-Shot" Beaudine, whom JB dubs "the fastest, most prolific director in the world." This was Beaudine's last film, and Joe Bob calls this movie a "resumé killer" since half the cast either died or retired from movies after making it. Beaudine's next-to-last movie was Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (with John Carradine), which always ran on a double-bill with this one in the late 1960s. MORE AFTER THE JUMP
Believe me, you'll learn more from this one Drive-In disc than you would from a whole year at some expensive hard-top film school, indispensible things like:
• When shooting day-for-night scenes, make sure the sky looks darker than the actors.
• When in doubt, use a medium shot. Establishment shots and close-ups just use up a lot of time and film stock.
• If you're making a picture with sound, silent-era gesturing by the actors is not recommended.
And genre rules such as:
• If you're an Indian (or Injun) planning to bushwack a cowboy, do it directly, don't run up the big rock behind him and jump on him first.
• If you live in a fortress, and you're doing brain experiments on humans in your laboratory, you don't HAVE to answer the door and, in fact, maybe you shouldn't.
• If you're in Jesse James' gang and you decide to ditch Jesse's robbery plan to turn him in for the reward money, make sure you'll make more from the reward than from your share of the robbery.
Friends, this is definitely one for the DVD Drive-In Library. • DAVE YOUNT
Notes:
DIRECTOR WILLIAM BEAUDINE began his career in the silent-era in 1909.
At the peak of his career he made 39 movies in one year. Joe Bob's
liner notes say he made over 500 films, and I'll take his word for it,
but IMDB.com lists "only" 278. In 1926 He directed Sparrows with
America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford. He worked with Bela Lugosi on
several films including The Ape Man (1943), Ghosts on the Loose (1943),
and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952). He directed several
Bowery Boys movies, including Clancy Street Boys (1943) when they were
also known as the Grand Street Boys. (He also directed Gas
House Kids Go West with Alfalfa in 1947.) In the late 1940s he directed
several Charlie Chan flicks. For television, he directed epsiodes of
Lassie, The Naked City, Spin and Marty and The Green Hornet.
Comments